3 Proven Methods to Establish Your Authority

It’s not easy when you’re just starting out to establish your authority. How do you convince someone to buy from your when you are just starting out? You have no success story as yet or you have no track record to speak of.

It’s ridiculously difficult to build your business if nobody knows who you are – especially online.

It’s impossible to get prospects to return your calls…

…or get people to opt in and become a lead, if they don’t perceive you as any kind of authority.

Yes you are. If you know just one person you can explain something about your business or product to then just think how many people out there that might be in a similar situation you could explain the same thing to and help.

You don’t need to be the expert. You just need to be the person explaining it or delivering the news.

Just putting yourself in the position to be that conduit, that megaphone – that person delivering the information on the topic – makes YOU the authority.

Why?

Because you’re in front of the camera and the people watching are not.

Many people are scared to do a Facebook Live, record a video, or write a blog post.

That’s good news for you!

If you are one of the few that are willing to put yourself out there, you will get authority status.

And I’m telling you it will be much easier once you attain that authority status to get people to…

Opt in to your lead magnets

Return your calls when you leave them a voicemail

Hop on the phone with you

Want to join you or become your customer

Once you create and share your content, people will feel comfortable because they think they know you.

They will feel they can trust you.

And if you create content that is educational, informative, and entertaining, they’ll start to like you to boot.

This leads us to method #2…

2. Brand Yourself

I’ve mentioned this before but your business is you, you need to brand yourself because people buy from people they know, like and trust. Things in your surrounding may change but if you have built up a reputation for yourself, then that stays with you.

Creating content with authenticity, based on your personal values and story builds your know, like and trust factor.

Which encourages people to join you, or buy from you, or become a lead or customer.

You need to do three things to build your personal brand.

I call them the “three C’s” of personal branding:

Clarity,

Consistency, and

Constancy.

Clarity obviously means to share clearly who you are

And who you’re not.

Just be true to who you are. You don’t need to try to pretend to have more expertise than you have or act any differently. Authenticity is the key.

Whoever your are and whatever your image is, be very clear so you can be clear about the audience you’re trying to attract, and the message you’re trying to convey.

Consistency means being consistent in all your messaging and communication

If you have an opinion or share one way of doing something one way, then don’t contradict yourself or say something different another week.

One of the other things is to remove those qualify words that make it seem as if you are unsure of your opinion on something. Words like, ‘maybe’, ‘probably’, ‘like’, are filler words or qualifying words that de-empahsize your message and make it seem like you don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you’re trying to establish authority, are probably not the best words to use.

Consistent messaging will also help you win and maintain an audience.

Constancy means putting yourself in front of your audience – all the time

In a world where everything moves so quickly, and any post you make gets buried immediately by so many other posts; and where platform algorithms constantly change, you need to be constantly creating new content to get in front of your audience.

Constancy is key so using a schedule to plan your content and then automating it will make it easier for you to be constantly in front of your audience.

Constantly remind your audience of who you are and what you do, and make them feel good about doing business with you.

It’s a phenomenal way to boost your authority.

3. Share your knowledge

Any time you learn something new, share it with people. This is all about Learn, Implement and Teach.

Can you answer some questions, and help people out a little bit?

Of course, you can!

My secret hack, provide valuable answers to questions in Facebook groups you are a part of, or on Quora.

Go into different online forums and be helpful.

Be useful

Provide value

Answer questions

Your main job is to provide value and serve so that people begin to see you as an authority.

You could spend three minutes day looking at some of the questions and the issues people are discussing in those groups.

Pick a few keywords and search for people looking for answers on topics you think you might be able to help with.

Now when someone is reading your answer, you’re being perceived as an authority.

Summary

If you’re looking to create authority quickly there’s no short cut. It takes time and discipline to always be consistent and creating content, providing value but one thing you can do is set yourself a schedule. I’m all about schedules and formulas to make it less overwhelming. So one formula I have is for providing value in groups.

Choose up to 3 groups to be a part of where you will provide value, help answer questions in order to establish your authority. Spend 45 minutes three times a week. Use 15 minutes for each of the 3 groups to find questions you can help answer. Schedule it into your week and boom, get your group time in and reduce the overwhelm.

I hope this has helped. Drop me a comment below if it has and good luck!